Ordinary Time

by Cathy Rentzenbrink

'There are already three of us in this marriage. I'm not sure there is room for a fourth . . .'

Ann is a reluctant Vicar's wife. She tries her best but her husband only has eyes for God, her son is asking questions she struggles to answer, and it is all too easy to displease the congregation. It may only be a matter of time before she makes the headlines of the local Vicar's wife gets giggles in church. Vicar's wife refuses to bake scones. Vicar's wife does not care about other people.

When her brother needs her help, Ann travels from Cornwall up to London. There she meets Jamie, and a new world unexpectedly opens up. Ann knows what the older women of the parish would say - she's made her bed and now she has to lie in it. But once she has been led into temptation, it may prove impossible to resist . . .

The funny and heartbreaking new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink, Ordinary Time is an unforgettable story of the joys and sorrows of everyday life; one that asks big questions about friendship and marriage, forgiveness and redemption, and the real meaning of love.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Book Club, Contemporary, Mental Health, Marriage, Novels

368 pages, Hardcover

Published July 11, 2024

About the author

Cathy Rentzenbrink grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in London. A former Waterstones bookseller, she is now Project Director of the charity Quick Reads and Associate Editor of The Bookseller magazine.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the unpretentious writing style, gentle but honest humour, flawed but sympathetic characters and the thoughtful plot of this novel about different kinds of love, loss, the enduring scars of childhood and the choices we make. The title reflects the liturgical name of the period between two great Christian festivals - Christmas and Easter; a fitting description for a period of moral and spiritual struggle for Ann, a reluctant, non-believing spouse to Tim, a vicar who takes God and the service of his people more seriously than paying attention to Ann and their son, Sam. To add to her problems, Ann's much loved younger brother is struggling with anxiety and a fixation of imminent death (I was drawn into a false sense of doom by the section dates which place this novel in 2019, just before the beginning of the Pandemic!) and we learn of the siblings difficult childhood marred by their father's early suicide. On her way to support brother Stephen from her Cornish vicarage, she meets Jamie, a gloriously handsome and empathetic hero-man, and falls in love. All the main characters, and even the minor, annoying parish pariahs, are drawn with endearing qualities and, although there is grief and mundane tragedy, there is also gentle and healing humour. Names are important and Ann's is no accident. Throughout the novel there is reference to Anna Karenina, but will Ann's fate be different from the great tragic heroine of literature?

[Jacki (Julia Flyte) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is ordinary but the book is not. I loved it. It will be one of my favourites for the year. I’ve put off reviewing it, because I get tongue tied when it’s a book I really love. I’d like to just push it into your hands and beseech you to read it.

It’s a contemporary novel but it has a vaguely mid century feel to it - which I love. It feels like Cathy Rentzenbrink is Barbara Pym’s granddaughter (she isn’t). I probably think that because the novel is centered on a vicarage and the somewhat eccentric congregation, but it also has all the heart and humour and pathos that Pym’s books have.

It’s about a woman called Ann, married to a vicar called Tim and living in Cornwall. Ann is not happy – although she adores her son. Her husband is devoted to his job but is an absent husband. Their house is horrible. She doesn’t know many people in Cornwall and she’s lonely. She thinks about whether she wants to turn her life upside down. I adored her and I felt for her.

Look, it’s not perfect. I never really bought why Ann married Tim in the first place. Another reviewer here called it dreary and I guess that because it’s a quiet book without a hugely dramatic arc. But there’s so much that is wonderful. You care about the characters. The humour is quiet, but it makes you smile. It’s about love and connections and evaluating your life and seeing the beauty in the everyday. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy: please, read it.

[Taggie Edmondes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, witty and a quick read. Talked a lot about grief, suicide and mental health which I worried would trigger me but found it moving instead. Didn’t really buy the Jamie and main character love story and actually found him quite annoying but liked the point around how the perception of an ‘ordinary’ and simple life can so often hide the darker secrets many people have. Many of the characters were flawed but I liked the (more subtle for some) growth elements of them especially the vicar

[Francis Pellow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. I really enjoyed this

[Tom Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, lovely, lovely book!!! So gentle in its approach and writing, Cathy Rentzenbrink you have a new fan!

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the characters and the subtle humour throughout the book. It was a nice balance for some of the heavier topics like suicide and mental health. Overall, I really enjoyed the story, but was unsatisfied by the ending. Ann deserves to be happy and it doesn’t have to comprise her being a good mother to Sam. Both can be true at the same time.

[Susannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this.
I thought it was going to be a gentle parochial tale but it is thoughtful and heartfelt and lovely and sad and hopeful.
All the feelings.
Recommended.

[Kerry Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first 70% of this book but it just fell a bit flat and like it was finished in a bit of a twee, predicable way. Disappointed because I loved the first part

[Rebecca]

5 STARS

The list of books I own but haven’t read is so long that I don’t tend to buy them now unless they’re on offer and on my TBR (a sad state of affairs but I need to get through them somehow!). But I happened upon this on a Kindle Daily Deal and thought I’d give it a go, and what a gem it was. Completely unpretentious and unassuming, just good, funny, warm writing that I lapped up in pretty much a day. I think Cathy Rentzenbrink has done an excellent job of balancing this with some of the heavier topics in the book, without any of it feeling heavy-handed at all. Just a really lovely book that I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about!

[Melissa Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book may be a hard one to sell to others in that it’s quite hard to describe and explain but I simply loved it. Couldn’t get enough.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordinary Time by Cathy Rentzenbrink is the book that saw me from 2024 into 2025 and it made a good end to one reading year and start to another. The title comes from the Christian liturgical calendar and refers to the time outside the main seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter.

Our main character, Ann, has a rather ordinary life and a stale marriage. She is a vicar’s wife but doesn’t really have much belief. Her husband Tim has plenty of time for God and his parishioners but very little time for Ann and their son. He really seems so self-centred and oblivious to those he should love, putting duty before his family.

I found Ann to be a likable character although I feel in her position I would have been rather tempted to leave my husband if I was treated in such an offhand manner. However, as the book progresses we find out why providing a stable family life for her son is so important to her. The author wrote very insightfully about Ann’s feelings towards her husband, her son and her brother, and created an understanding of what her life is like. When temptation comes her way in the form of Jamie, it is completely understandable that she considers what a different life might be like and whether it would be possible.

I found the whole depiction of parish life in a small community to be very convincing and often provided some entertaining moments. I felt for poor Ann moving from one parish to another at her husband’s whim and ending up in a damp vicarage, with a dining room full of jumble, where parishioners were used to just popping in anytime. Ann was always concerned she would do something to earn the disapproval of not only her husband but the ladies of the parish. However, some of them proved to be very supportive at times.

The author’s writing put me in mind of Anne Tyler. Both authors show great skill in writing about ordinary things of everyday life and making them fascinating. A quietly compelling book, Ordinary Time is an insightful portrait of a marriage and of lives which have been impacted by childhood events.

[Nicola Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ordinary Time is the story of Ann, vicar's wife, mother, sister - this is how she is defined but it's stifling her. Her husband, Tim, thinks more of God than of his own son, let alone his wife, pushing both aside for often trivial pastoral matters. The family have newly arrived in Cornwall for Tim to take up residence as the vicar - another move, another new school, same old stale marriage.

Cathy Rentzenbrink portrays small parish life perfectly, one in which the vicar and his family are almost public property. Barbara and Doreen think nothing of simply popping their head around the back door, and the dining room of the vicarage is full of jumble that Tim doesn't even notice, let alone think is a problem.

This is an intensely character driven novel, with human nature and all its foibles observed to great effect. Rentzenbrink writes with dry humour but it's also a moving tale of childhoods marred by great tragedy and how the trauma of dealing with it can trickle down through the rest of your life.

When Ann meets Jamie, a man who she feels not only attraction for, but a kinship with, it drives her to reflect on what's important to her. I thought this thread was beautifully written with both yearning and possibility (and impossibility too).

Ordinary Time is a story of a marriage, a family, a loss and a love. It's a quiet novel but one which delves deep into feelings and emotions. I particularly appreciated the honesty in Ann's narrative and how she let rip internally all that she didn't feel able to say aloud. It's a fabulous novel. I enjoy this author's perceptive and funny writing so much.

[Claire Tomonaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was wonderful. Simple and heartfelt. It made me laugh and cry. I know this novel will stick with me.

[Debby Binns · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a marvellous book of the female experience. Its completely authentic and I really looked forward to sitting down to pick it up and read it. Its full of the painful realities of modern life, married life, and being a Vicar's wife. Its also filled with heart filling amounts of wonderful humour, lively characters, and incredibly good dialogue. I heard Cathy R talk about the writing of this book at the Falmouth Book Festival. She pictured the church at Mylor Bridge as the setting for the book - but she said (I hope I'm not mis-quoting) that she picked up this church and set it near the GreenBank Hotel in Falmouth - so the views were from there. I had this picture in my mind as I read this awesome book.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book about an unhappily married vicar's wife. Some characters from her previous book also appear, which I liked very much.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordinary but enjoyable.

[Mrs]

Ann has a loving and supportive relationship with her brother Stephen, but not with her husband Tim, a minister who is more interested in his flock than his family. He takes Ann for granted and is very cold towards his son.
Ann’s father took his own life on the railway, and Ann and Stephen there have been different but long lasting ripples through their lives as a result. It is very touching how just Ann’s presence can soothe Stephen.
Ann has a panic attack on a train, when there is “passenger action”, and she is helped by a stranger, Jamie, who turns out to be a friend of Stephen. Things develop…
Interesting take on relationships within a church, between a minister, church members, and agnostic wife of minister , and questioning son. The lack of joy or interest in anything material outside the church was also striking.
Ordinary Time is the religious term for the period between Easter and Advent .
I really liked this book.

[Hester · Rating 2 out of 5]

A light read , undemanding with flashes of reality in the relationship between the protagonist and her brother but otherwise it's as predictable as the dalays on the West Coast Mainline where I read it.

A particularly stereotypical portrait of a heavy drinking , gambling but "heart as huge as a planet" Irishman, who seemed to be the sole cause of all the sadness, was hard to swallow as was the clichéd handsome and heroic stranger who provides the love interest .

If a portrait of unexamined love bombing is your specialist interest along with an unassertive , downtrodden bookish ( of course she's bookish) mother with hidden qualities, which only the love bomber sees , then go right ahead . For me it reads like a user guide to how women learn to feast on the crumbs from the table and how we self sacrifice because of our children . It may be true but it wasn't nearly messy enough to convince me .

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. I listened to the audio, wonderfully narrated by Olivia Poulet. I was drawn to this by the cover, weirdly though apart from the main character travelling by train a few times it doesn’t reflect the content of the book at all.

It’s mainly about a 40 something woman who is unhappy and frustrated by life. She’s married to a vicar who is more interested in serving god than caring for his wife and son.It covers big topics, grief, trauma, suicide, mental health including ocd. But it also has an underlying warmth and humour throughout that never felt jarring.I loved the relationship between Ann and her brother and sister in law. I enjoyed the cast of eccentric smaller characters. A minor complaint is that for me the affair with Jamie never rang true. I loved the message of hope and forgiveness.

[Becca Reho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn’t decide whether to give this two stars or five, it’s that kind of book. There’s a quiet ordinariness that i love in a book, and to some degree the characters are flawed but likeable.

However, there were some aspects that I found very stereotypical and not credible - I struggled to believe the rapidity with which the handsome, single Londoner fell for the married, downtrodden vicars wife. Really? Why? What on earth did he see in her?
I also struggled with the depiction of Christians within the story, as I felt it was quite biased and lacked any balance. They were all either ungrateful and oblivious or elderly busybodies, until the very brief appearance of a bishop and his wife in the very last chapter.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my usual read at all, ordinary but not, I enjoyed it but also found it Tim so frustrating, (I know you’re meant too) but it made the “wrapped up in a nice bow” ending very unlikely, good read though for something different

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably a 4.5 - it was a lovely read

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it. Beautiful writing. Just my cup of tea.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this, could have been 5 stars but I didn't like the love interest

[simo ·˚ ༘ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Yvie Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love

[Gwen Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this one … loved the characters and the basis of the story . A strong reminder to love and forgive (& live in the present). One of my best reads of 2026 so far .

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book

[Caitlin Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - I loved the first 70% of the book but the ending made me want to scream

[Jo Stass · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, gentle novel that tackles interesting subjects such as mental health, love and loss with great wit and compassion. It's about a vicar's wife who isn't particularly religious, which is an interesting dynamic I enjoyed exploring. I really liked all of the characters although I'm not sure I found all of the relationships in the book entirely believable.